The Story Behind the Mysterious Face That Adorns Most of Fornasetti’s Décor
Edwardian-era opera singer Lina Cavalieri is one of the most ubiquitous faces in design, made so in the contemporary age by Milan-based decor firm Fornasetti. Its heir, artist Barnaba Fornasetti, admits, however, that few people ask about the face that has adorned many of the family firm’s plates and other objects for the past 70-plus years.
“She has an incredible story,” he says.
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Indeed, a closer look into that story depicts the opera singer and actress as the superstar of her day. A global name before television, she was perhaps the first singer to have a perfume made for her and to endorse beauty brands like Palmolive and Gellé Frères.
The Roman-born performer made her big stage debut at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in Giacomo Puccini’s “Bohème” in 1900. She went on to interpret opera’s most famous female protagonists: Manon, Thaïs, Floria Tosca and Violetta from “La Traviata.”
For much of the Belle Epoque, her angelic voice echoed through the halls of the Paris Opera, Covent Garden in London and the Italian theater of St. Petersburg. In the latter, she serenaded the last of the Romanovs and later witnessed the dawn of the Russian Revolution. At the old Metropolitan in New York, she was passionately embraced by costar Enrico Caruso in a scene from “Fedora,” her first on-stage kiss, she writes in her autobiography “Le mie verità [My truths],” compiled in the late 1930s.
During her heyday she was considered the “most beautiful woman in the world” and, heralded for her porcelain skin and doll-like features, she was dubbed “the ultimate proof of Venus on earth” by Italian poet and playboy Gabriele D’Annunzio.
One of the very first to capture her was Italian portrait artist Giovanni Boldini, a proponent of the Tuscan Macchiaioli art movement and contemporary of Edgar Degas.
She captivated and was courted by a long list of men in her younger years and even became a princess through her first marriage to Russian prince Aleksandr “Sascha” Vladimirovič Barjatinskij in 1899. After realizing that the Russian court was not conducive to her ambitions as a performer, she later traveled to the U.S. and married American heir and Astor family member Robert W. Chanler. That marriage was followed by one to French actor and tenor Lucien Muratore and then to opera singer and race car driver Giuseppe Campari.
With all but two relatives on record alive today, her superstar history would all but have been forgotten if Piero Fornasetti hadn’t felt a cosmic connection with her face whilst flipping through a 19th-century magazine in the early 1950s. It was then that he began working on what would later become his most famous and iconic series: Tema e Variazioni (Theme and Variations).
Barnaba Fornasetti has over the years been a catalyst in artistically spreading Lina’s beauty in the modern age. At Milan Design Week in April, he will present the next extension of “Tema e Variazioni,” which will include wall and desk clocks and a set of eight plates adorned with Lina’s soulful gaze.
Like many superstars, Cavalieri’s personal history was punctuated with struggle. She was born in 1875 on Christmas Day in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood into hard times. “In every human activity, there is nothing harder than the beginning,” she wrote in her autobiography.”
Her father Fiorindo lost his job as an assistant to an architect after his boss made advances to her mother Teonilla, who refused him. Forced to go to work and help support her family, Lina took odd jobs as a seamstress and later as a florist to make ends meet. Eventually she was mentored by a music teacher, who, author Franco Di Tizio says, abused and impregnated her. She secretly gave birth to her son Alessandro in 1892, though she continued to care for him, never mentioning in her writings who his real father was.
Di Tizio, a doctor by vocation, first came into contact with Cavalieri’s story through the widely popularized 1955 film “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” starring Dolce Vita actress Gina Lollobrigida. He lives in the seaside town of Francavilla, in the Abruzzo region, and is the author of two books: “Lina Cavalieri: La Donna Piu’ Bella del Mondo” (Italian for “the most beautiful woman in the world”) in 2004 and “Lina Cavalieri: Massima Testimonianza di Venere in Terra” (“The ultimate proof of Venus on earth”) written in 2019 and published by Ianieri.
Her last family members are two nieces: Oretta Cavalieri, who worked in fashion and is now retired, and Sabrina Cavalieri, a professor. Though they never knew her, Oretta, granddaughter of Lina’s brother Giovanni, said there are a lot of tall tales about Lina out there, but Di Tizio’s books are the most accurate. One thing is for sure, she recalls — Lina never stopped taking care of her family until the end.
“She took care of everyone,” she says of her aunt, who she claims is more famous outside of Italy, having made her mark in Hollywood alongside contemporaries like “Latin Lover” Rudolph Valentino and John Barrymore, grandfather of Drew.
Oretta says what makes her most proud is the stories of her aunt’s resilience.
When her youth ebbed, she embarked on new ventures, like founding a high end beauty salon in Paris, even penning a beauty column for Hearst and later raising animals in her villa in Rieti outside of Rome.
In her writings, Cavalieri reflects on growing old and turning her attention away from her physical persona and on to nurturing relationships with relatives, dear friends, and her sheep, hens and rabbits that occupied most of her time in the final years of her life. She talks more about relationships — like her ill ease in the Russian court during her short lived-term as princess.
In her memoirs, she leaves the future with valid advice that resonates in the world today. Of relationships, she says, above love and passion, affection is tantamount to respect and comprehension. “Affection is made of memories, while love is made of violent sensations. Affection that increases with the passing of the years and does not undergo the ups and downs to which love is vulnerable.”
Nearly a century later, Lina’s humor also still resonates. Of Italian men, she warns female readers: “The Italian man is a dreamer, a poet, intelligent, jealous, exhibitionist. He loves family and his children but is a relentless hunter of sensations.”
Today, in the hills of Florence to the south side of the Arno river bank, lies the last place Lina lived in and where she met her death. Di Tizio and Fornasetti both describe her death as a fluke accident despite rumors she was once a German spy. In 1944, while evacuating during a blitz, she went back to her home to save mementos and pieces of jewelry when the corner of her hillside was bombed by U.S. forces. At Villa Torre Al Pino, which lies halfway up a narrow country road called Via Suor Maria Celeste, a visitor rings a few buzzers of the condominium building that was once her home, in hopes that someone might know they are living in the last residence of a bygone legend. Sadly, nobody in the building seems to know who she is or was.
Looking ahead, Barnaba Fornasetti says his main task is to make sure Cavalieri’s image continues to evolve as her face continues to fuel a creative concept linked to current events. Cavalieri’s face has been transformed by Fornasetti into 400 variations over the years, such as the Anonymous mask, the crown for Elizabeth II’s jubilee or the evolution of Lina into a male.
“We are talking about Fornasetti’s most enduring theme. What inspires Fornasetti’s loyalty and unleashes this inexhaustible creativity are her golden proportions — like those of a Greek statue, and her enigmatic expression, which is similar to that of the Mona Lisa.”
The most beautiful thing about Lina, Di Tizio reflects, is her life story. “She was able to take the high road and it’s important to remember that she came from nothing and rose to be known as the most beautiful woman in the world, charting the best life for herself.”
Oretta, speaking from her home in Rome, brushes off highly romanticized renditions of her aunt’s life that pale in comparison to who she was and what she really accomplished.
“There are a lot of tall tales out there about my aunt. That movie with Gina Lollobridgida doesn’t do her justice. It’s probably time for a new movie. A real one.”
Launch Gallery: Lina Cavalieri's Remarkable Life
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